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City Seeking New Test for Gifted Admissions

The city will search for a new admissions test for its gifted and talented public school programs, a Department of Education official said on Monday, in part to address concerns that some families were “gaming” the test through extensive preparation.

The official, Marc Sternberg, the new deputy chancellor for portfolio planning, said the change could occur for the 2012-13 year. The city has one more year in its current testing contract.

Mr. Sternberg announced the move at a City Council hearing on education, after extensive questioning from council members about why the city’s gifted programs were not as racially and economically diverse as the city schools as a whole. David Greenfield, a council member from Brooklyn, asked whether the Department of Education was concerned about how families in richer communities were “expending thousands” of dollars on tutoring and classes before the gifted test, giving their children a better opportunity to get into the programs.

“We are concerned about it,” Mr. Sternberg said. He added that the city would examine “whether we could look for a different kind of test that, to be frank, would be harder to game in the way that so many families do, so as a result be more likely to result in a level playing field.”

The current testing program for the city’s gifted kindergarten and first-grade classes was adopted in 2008 as a way to standardize admissions across the city, to address longstanding complaints that favoritism played a role when districts were allowed to set their own rules, as well as to increase racial and economic diversity in the programs.

But a result has been that while more students now take admissions tests for gifted programs, fewer students now enroll, and they are less racially diverse, council members said.

Under the previous policies, 15 percent of the students admitted to gifted programs were Hispanic and 31 percent were black. In the 2009-10 school year, 12 percent were Hispanic and 15 percent were black. Over all, 39 percent of kindergartners are Hispanic and 27 percent are black.

Six districts in central Brooklyn and the South Bronx will have no gifted kindergartens in the fall because so few students qualified.

Over the next several months, Mr. Sternberg said, the city will explore whether a newer test reflecting up-to-date research could result in a more diverse gifted program.

“We think that the testing technologies have evolved significantly since our last” request for proposals, he said.

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A wide range of issues would be in play, Mr. Sternberg said, including the testing protocols and outreach, as well as the test itself. “And we are every bit as committed as we have been, if not more so, in trying to find a way that there is proper representation among students.”

Currently the city uses a mixture of the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, or Olsat, a reasoning exam, and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment. Because the Bracken is a knowledge test, it is easy to prepare for, and increasing numbers of nursery schools and private companies offer tutoring. Preparing for the Olsat is more controversial, but some companies have claimed high rates of success in helping students master the exam.

Students who score at the 90th percentile are offered a seat in a gifted class. The number of children scoring over 97th percentile, making them candidates for one of five highly selective “citywide” gifted programs, rose by one-third this year, with the greatest growth in middle-class districts.

The city has repeatedly defended its admissions policies, and even after Mr. Sternberg’s remarks, it continued to do so on Monday. David Cantor, the press secretary, said that while the city would naturally look for the best test available next year, that did not indicate a problem with the current test. After the hearing, Mr. Sternberg spoke with members of the Education Department’s communications staff and then told reporters that his comments did not indicate a change in policy and refused to take further questions.

Whether a different test would end the problem of professional preparation was unclear.

“If they change the tests to another test, it’s not going to make a big difference,” said Bige Doruk, the founder of Bright Kids NYC, a tutoring company. “I think this notion that you can change it and stop people from preparing is quite not correct. There’s too much at stake.”

Mr. Sternberg also said that the city would look at the timing of the test. Currently, families do not find out until June if their child matched to a gifted program, leading to high anxiety among some parents, particularly those whose children are on waiting lists for their overcrowded neighborhood schools or who must decide whether to put down deposits on private schools.

Elizabeth Sciabarra, who heads the city’s student enrollment office, said the main constraint the city had faced in notifying parents earlier was that the current test was valid only for children 4 years old or older, so the city had to wait until January of the year before kindergarten to administer it. But, she said, that too might be looked at in searching for a better test, adding that children could be tested even earlier.

“The only way we can change the timing,” she said, “is to do as Marc suggests, is to look at perhaps another vehicle for testing that could get us to a place where we might be able to test earlier.”

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on June 22, 2010, on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: City Seeking New Test For Gifted Admissions. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe